Helping overcome unnecessary exam stress

As if studying for and writing exam does not give rise to enough anxiety and stress, an examinations board has apologised for ‘poorly wording’ an A Level Psychology test question – just weeks after making an error in a GCSE paper, reports the BBC.

In the A Level paper, students saw a question asking them to ‘calculate the mean percentage of words’, normally seen in a Maths exam and exam board OCR said about 5,000 A Level candidates had been affected, but it was not yet known how many tackled the question. OCR has since apologised and said it would ‘correct this in our marking’.

Last month the same board made an error is a GCSE literature paper.

Damian Walmsley, deputy head teacher at St Mary’s College in Hull, said students who sat the exam last week had been left ‘disconcerted and confused’ by the question. “The exam was stopped briefly by the invigilator, who contacted the exam board and got advice for students to ignore the question,” he added.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “Mistakes in exam papers undermine the confidence of students, teachers and schools. It is crucial that processes are in place to prevent these from happening.”

Treating students suffering from exam stress and anxiety is done by many clinical hypnotherapists across the country and the National Council of Hypnotherapy, with almost 2,000 therapists on its register, says this form of stress seems to be growing.

And this is backed up by figures from Childline which show that it gave 3,135 counselling sessions on exam stress in 2016-17 – a rise of 11% over two years. More than a fifth of those took place in May as pupils faced upcoming exams, with many telling counsellors they were struggling with subjects, excessive workloads and feeling unprepared.

Children aged 12-15 were most likely to be counselled about exam stress but this year saw the biggest rise – up 21% on 2015-16 – amongst 16-18-year-olds, many of whom were preparing for exams to determine university places, said the BBC.

The charity said young people consistently told counsellors exam stress was contributing to ‘depression, anxiety, panic attacks, excessive crying, low self-esteem, self-harming and suicidal thoughts’.

Hypnotherapy, says the NCH, can free people from feelings of stress and anxiety and people who are ready to explore ways of freeing themselves from this and want to live a fulfilled and happy life, should consider contacting a therapist near them for an initial session. The NCH directory is easy to use- just a few clicks and a stress=free life could be just around the corner!

A hypnotherapist can help assess your anxiety, identifying the root of stress or anxiety,” says the NCH. “Then they will set you a goal asking how you wish to feel, how you would like to be, and things that you would choose to do in your life if you were free of anxiety. They will then work with you to reach your goals using a range of different techniques. Every therapist may use slightly different techniques, but working towards the same goal.”

The goal of hypnotherapy sessions is for the person to feel more confident and more relaxed; to be calmer and be able to make decisions more easily. People who have experienced side effects of anxiety such as insomnia, find that they are sleeping much better and as a result are able to work more effectively.